Pandorum (2009)
Pandorum is a German-United States 2009 post-apocalyptic science fiction film, with elements of locked room mystery, horror, and survival adventure. The film was directed by Christian Alvart and produced by Robert Kulzer, Jeremy Bolt and Paul W.S. Anderson. Travis Milloy wrote the screenplay from a story by Milloy and Alvart. It stars Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster. In 2174, the human population has grown to the point of exceeding the carry capacity of Earth, leading humanity to build aninterstellar ark named Elysium. The mission is to send 60,000 people on a 123-year trip to establish a colony on an Earth-like planet named Tanis. The passengers and crew are in hypersleep, with the crew on a hypersleep rotation to cover the entire journey. Eight years into the mission the ship receives a transmission from Earth in multiple languages: "You're all that's left of us. Good luck, God bless, and godspeed." Some unknown time later two members of the flight crew, altruistic claustrophobe Corporal Bower and level-headed Lieutenant Payton, are awakened from hypersleep due to power surges. Improper emergence from hypersleep leaves them both with a troublesome amount of amnesia. The surges belie an unstable reactor, which leaves them unable to reach the bridge. Bower ventures deep into the now seemingly abandoned ship to jump-start the reactor before it goes critical. He soon remembers how he was inspired by the flight since childhood while also having flashbacks of his wife whom he hopes to find in hyper-sleep on the ship. After having a claustrophobic panic attack, he begins to suffer from Pandorum, a severe psychological illness which once caused a space captain to send his entire crew to their deaths. Bower has a fleeting glimpse of a woman, who escapes from him in fear, then encounters many savage pale-skinned mutants possessing a heightened sense of smell and strength. They are cannibals, attacking both humans and each other. He also encounters a human, whose agitation lures the mutants, and the two attempt to escape. The other is captured and eaten alive, but Bower is saved by Manh, a Vietnamese-speaking agriculturist and skilled combatant. He also meets the woman from earlier: Nadia, a former geneticist who has survived for months by attacking and stealing from other humans. Despite Nadia's solitary and ruthless disposition, he convinces the two to accompany him on his way to the reactor, and they venture deeper into the ship. Meanwhile, Payton is trying to access the bridge when he is surprised by a strange young man named Corporal Gallo who is in a severe state ofshock. As a group of mutants attacks Bower's group, they flee into a barricaded chamber, where another human, a cook named Leland, has been living for a long time. Gallo has now overcome his shock and claims he had to kill his rotation team in self-defense because they developed Pandorum after Earth was destroyed in a catastrophe. Gallo speaks with gruesome fascination of Pandorum, provoking Payton into developing its early symptoms. He attemps to silence Gallo, who then grows insolent and continues to provoke Payton. At the same time, Leland invites Bower's team to dinner, and shows them mural drawings depicting the true story of Gallo's past. Gallo developed Pandorum when the ship received news of Earth's destruction, as did any humans that he brought out of hypersleep. Gallo then manipulated the other psychotics into exiling themselves within the massive ship to play a nasty game which involved fighting, capturing, torturing and eating each other. Eventually Gallo went back into hypersleep, leaving the psychotics to evolve over the course of successive generations into the pale skinned mutants who continue the game Gallo started with their ancestors. Their mutation is due to anenzyme given to the humans members in hypersleep that was supposed to both help their bodies adjust to the conditions on Tanis and speed up evolutionary ecological selection. Instead, they ending up adapting to the completely artificial conditions of the ship's environment. As the story draws to a close, Bower's team falls unconscious They wake to find themselves hanging from chains by their feet. Leland admits that he intends to eat them, but relents when Bower informs him that the power surges indicate that reactor failure will occur in less than an hour. Leland then joins the group. Bower regains some of his memory when his party reaches the passengers' hypersleep chambers. He recalls that his wife had left him while still on Earth, so he enlisted to Elysium's crew as he had nothing else left. As Bower remembers, he grieves to the point of giving up on saving the ship. Nadia helps him remain optimistic and motivated, saying that his wife actually saved his life by leaving him, as his presence on the ship will help humanity survive. When Bower's group find the reactor, they also find that it is the lair for the large mutant community. Bower fails to make a stealthy approach, and Manh distracts the roused mutants so Bower can restart the reactor, which destroys most of the mutants. Leland flees, and Manh is cornered by their leader, which leads to a one-sided battle in the monster's favor. The creature's arrogance allows Mahn to kill it, though he is himself killed when he hesitates to slay a mutant child. With the power restored, Payton can finally access the bridge, but Gallo assaults him to prevent him going. Payton sees Gallo injecting him with the sedative, then suddenly disappearing as he is left holding the syringe himself. It is thus revealed that "Payton" was hallucinating his younger self and, is actually an older Gallo. Leland appears and Gallo incapacitates him with the sedative, then enters the bridge. Bower and Nadia soon arrive, with Bower's amnesia cleared away, now remembering that the man in Payton's uniform is not the Payton he knows from his rotation. Gallo opens the shutters on the bridge's windows, revealing that the ship is apparently lost somewhere in space where no stars are visible. The revelation is the final trip to cause Bower's mind to slip into Pandorum, allowing Gallo to manipulate him like he did the Pandorum-afflicted ancestors of the mutants. He tries to convince Bower that they must continue the wild primitive state within the ship to replace human civilization, since moralistic altruism led to the overpopulation and destruction of humanity on Earth. Just as the ship's log reveals that 923 years have passed since the mission started, Nadia observes bioluminescent ocean life through the windows, indicating that the stars are missing because the ship landed itself on Tanis and has been lying underwater for 800 years. Gallo attacks Bower and Nadia, but Bower's psychosis has him seeing mutants on the bridge. In his delirium, Bower breaks a window, flooding the ship. Nadia manages to snap Bower out his condition, and they get themselves into a hypersleep pod. The flood triggers a hull breach emergency which automatically ejects all active pods to the surface while Gallo, Leland and the remaining mutants drown. Bower and Nadia surface near a lush coastline, and witness the other pods ascending one by one. Thus begins Year One on the Earth-like Tanis, with 1,213 survivors from the original 60,000 humans.